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Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Lydia McGrew on In-Principle Arguments against Miracles

I think this would be a good occasion to bring up a suspicion of mine, and a source of frustration for me. On the one hand, the atheist seems to be complaining about lack of evidence, or claiming that the evidence supports his own atheistic view. That seems to suggest that the world happens to be one that lacks evidence for a deity, and even empirical evidence for a deity.

However, there also seem to be in-principle arguments designed to show that saying Godidit is wrong on principle. It seems to me that if a skeptic says we don't have any evidence, or any empirical evidence for God, the soul, or whatever, we need to first ask them what they think of attempts to show that that sort of evidence is impossible in principle. If the skeptic claims to reject such arguments, then we have to insist that the skeptic be consistent in rejecting them, and that they not bring them in through the back door as the discussion proceeds.

As Lydia McGrew writes:

Among in-principle objections, a set frequently encountered involves the claim that it is always illicit to use the action of God (characterized dismissively by the atheist as the claim “God did it!”) as an hypothesized cause for any event in the real world. When we consider that atheists also think Christians irrational for believing on the basis of insufficient evidence, the “heads I win; tails you lose” nature of this objection should be self-evident. How is it at all reasonable to tell Christians that they do not have enough evidence for their belief and then to tell them, in the next breath, that any evidence they do bring to the bar must be ruled out of court? Yet the claim that Divine action can never be rationally hypothesized can be surprisingly slippery and hence can seem surprisingly difficult to answer.McGrew's paper is here.

6 comments:

"How is it at all reasonable to tell Christians that they do not have enough evidence for their belief and then to tell them, in the next breath, that any evidence they do bring to the bar must be ruled out of court?"

I keep saying it, over and over. Just show me the evidence. If it is convincing evidence, I'm not going to rule it out. But don't expect me to just accept whatever you bring to the table without challenging it.

"But don't expect me to just accept whatever you bring to the table without challenging it."

Nobody is asking you to do so. But what you are doing is something else entirely - you are obstinately refusing to label anything you don't accept as "evidence". Sure, go ahead - challenge the evidence. But when you say it's not evidence in the first place, then you're not challenging it - you're simply denying it.

And while we're at it, im-skeptical, evidence for your unassuaged hunger for the Truth, of which you are more than well aware you do not have, is your continual presence on this website. You refuse to admit it, but you come back to hear more from Crude, from Ben, from Victor, even (God alone knows why) from me, because you perceive that we (through no credit whatsoever to ourselves - far from it) know something that you desperately want to hear. Were this not so, we would have heard the last from you long ago, and you know this.

And this is good! It means you are not beyond hope (as at least one other contributor to this site appears to be). You struggle mightily against the Truth, but in that very struggling, you reveal just how important that Truth is to you.

So, I-S, you reject all in-principle arguments against theistic evidence?

In practice, I find that skeptics will say "Show me the evidence" at one point, and then, when we scratch far enough, we find one of those in-principle arguments against such arguments at work which, if followed consistently, would rule out the possibility of supporting anti-materialist claims with evidence.

"So, I-S, you reject all in-principle arguments against theistic evidence?"

I don't reject anything without at least knowing what it is first. People keep insisting that there could never be any kind of evidence for their God that I would not dismiss out of hand. All I'm saying is that you should let me be the one who decides what I would find convincing and what I would dismiss.

Yes, I reject many theistic arguments because I find that they're based on unsupported premises. But I wouldn't say that if I didn't examine them first. Yes, I reject many claims of miracles because they seem to be based on emotions rather than any kind of godly intervention. But if you care to show me a phenomenon that truly has the characteristics that I would call 'miraculous', then I will give it serious consideration.

Sober's view, as outlined by Lydia, seems groundless. The theist is surely entitled to put forward any conception of God she likes. The atheist can respond by trying to show that this conception is inconsistent. But he has no business demanding that the theist's God have properties of his own choosing.

Something Lydia says worries me, though. She asks, How is it at all reasonable to tell Christians that they do not have enough evidence for their belief and then ...?It's surely nonsensical for you to tell me that I don't have enough evidence for my belief. For if evidence is what produces belief, and the belief exists, then the evidence must be there. What you are telling me is that the evidence, assuming we can agree between us as to what that is, is not enough to produce belief in you.

I sometimes wonder what we are trying to achieve with these discussions. Are we trying to persuade those on the other side to come over to us? Or are we trying to convince ourselves that our own beliefs are justified by exposing them to criticism?

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About Me

I am the author of C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason, published by Inter-Varsity Press. I received a Ph.D in philosophy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989.